FLOWERY BRANCH — Falcons coach Mike Smith has no intentions of being a dream killer when delivering news to a player that his services are no longer needed.﻿

He walks that fine line of being truthful, direct and still uplifting when telling players they are being released.

Several players are set to play in the last game of their football careers when the Falcons (1-2) close out the exhibition season at Jacksonville (2-1) at 6:30 p.m. Thursday at EverBank Field.

After returning to Atlanta, the Falcons must trim their roster from 75 players to 53 by 9 p.m. Friday night.

Smith, who’s in his fifth year as head coach, meets with each player to share the news.

“You have to be very direct with the guys on the field,” Smith said.

Most starters are not expected to play against the Jaguars, so the players on the bubble will get one final chance to impress the coaches. Smith stresses that other teams in the league might be interested in their services.

“They are not only being evaluated by our coaching staff, but they are being evaluated by 31 other teams in the league,” Smith said. “The personnel staff spent a lot of time in this preseason evaluating players. So, if they don’t have an opportunity here, their performance on the field is being evaluated by someone else.”

The Falcons will likely start releasing players early Friday. In the past under Smith and general manager Thomas Dimitroff, the Falcons have not pushed their decisions up to the deadline.

“It is just a tough time of the year when you have to go down from 90 to 75 and from 75 down to 53,” Smith said. “It’s part of the business. It’s something that you have to deliver and it’s something that you have to be honest with the players and tell them why they are going to be on the team and why they are not going to be on the team.”

Some of the released players will have the opportunity to come back on the team’s eight-player practice squad.“They are familiar with our scheme and may possibly have an opportunity to come back,” Smith said.

Here’s a position-by-position analysis of the roster heading into the final cuts:

OFFENSE

Quarterbacks (2, number of players on the opening day roster against Chicago in 2011 at the position) – Locks: Matt Ryan and Luck McCown. On the bubble: Dominique Davis.

McCown played the past three seasons in Jacksonville under new Falcons offensive coordinator Dirk Koetter.

Davis has dazzled in the exhibition games, completing 19 of 32 pass attempts for 227 yards with two touchdowns and one interception for a passer rating of 88.9.

It will be interesting to see if the team exposes him to the waiver wire and try to sneak him back through to the practice squad.

Antone Smith starred on special teams last season and should make it back to the roster. If Polite doesn’t show well against Jacksonville, the Falcons may be in the salary-cap casualty market for a fullback.

Disagree that Davis on the bubble. I think McCown is on the bubble. He's not guaranteed to make the roster just because the Falcons picked him up this week. It's the same situation as Brett Romberg last year. The Falcons picked him up when it was clear McClure wasn't going to play in the opener, but he wasn't on the roster Week 1 because the team didn't want to guarantee his salary, and were comfortable with Hawley being the starter.

I think if Davis plays well tonight, then you might see the same situation happen this year. They could cut McCown, with the intention of bringing him back Week 2. But Davis needs a strong showing obviously, because in the worst-case scenario, if Ryan gets hurt during the Chiefs game, the team needs to have some confidence that he can come in and play.

Also don't agree that Sidbury is on the bubble. He's a lock to make the team.

I think Sidbury has had a good summer. He's shown his trademark 1st step which is 2nd only to Abe's on the team. I've even seen him make some nice plays against the run, which means he's potentially ready for a significant increase in reps.

Is he going to have 8 sacks this year? Probably not. But in the 3-5 range? Sure. If we can get this sort of production from our DL rotation, we should be fine:

If Peters was playing a full year, I'd want to see 3-5 sacks/10 Hits+Pressures, but since he'll probably only play half the sack, I cut those numbers in half.

If you're curious as to what the numbers looked like last year, those 4 DEs combined for 18.5 sacks and 48.5 Hits+Pressures. This year's numbers I'm looking at around 20-30 combined sacks, and about 65 Hits+Pressures. Basically if they hit around 25/65, that's a 33% improvement from a year ago.

Those 4 DTs combined for 5 sacks and 29 Hits+Pressures last year. This year, I'm hoping for a combined number of 5-10 sacks and about 35 Hits+Pressures. I'm not really hoping for a ton of improvement from those guys mainly because I'm not sure how much Babineaux has in the tank, how healthy Peters will be and the likelihood that he'll probably not be all that good for the <10 games he plays this year, and having only minimal faith that Jerry can pick up the slack.

And if we can throw in another 5-10 sacks and 30+ Hits+Pressures from the rest of the defense on blitzes, we should be good to go. FYI, the number for non-DL last year was 5 sacks and 20.5 Hits+Pressures.

Are you sure that pressure is going to come from the line? Just asking the dumb Q here. You potentially have much improved corner play, which would allow the front 7 all to contribute to the rush when needed. Even if it were in the form of zone blitzes, you should see improved sack performance as much from the linebacking corps as the line itself.

Mike Nolan as the coordinator. Asante Samuel at one corner. I've long thought the defense has to improve for this team to take the next step, and there are reasons for hope, other than taking everyone's sack totals along the front and multiplying by some factor.

Improved 3rd down efficiency wouldn't look as sexy, but would have the same overall effect.

I think this defense will be more aggressive with the blitzes, but I don't suddenly think we'll morph into Rex Ryan or Jim Johnson's defenses.

And for the record, I probably had the least amount of confidence in Robinson's move to the slot than any other Falcon fan this off-season, and over the past month, my confidence level has not grown a millimeter, milligram, or milliliter (is confidence measured in distance, weight, or volume???)

We'll see what happens this year. Those are the benchmarks I'm expecting. Anybody that doesn't reach those benchmarks and doesn't have a major injury to blame because of it, then they underachieved and potentially a candidate for release in 2013. And yes, I still don't think Edwards injury was major. The guy was limited in or missed only 10% of the team's practices during the regular season. That number needs to be at least 20% before I think it's a major factor.

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